Outbreak
by Elite Shade
Summary: A short story to get into the season, all involving the after effects of a massive zombie outbreak that swept through all of Zootopia.


**Hey there dear readers! This is one of my contributions to this, my favorite month, and my favorite upcoming holiday! It's a dark and sad little short story, but hopefully also a little uplifting.**

Outbreak

by

Elite Shade

 _"Once more, we are keeping you up to date on the complete quarantine of the entire city of Zootopia. The military is still not allowing any mammals to approach the new walls, on either side, and the sky above the city is still officially a No-Fly-Zone for any non-military aircra-"_

The knob of the small and very well used grey radio was switched off while Bogo sighed. He looked around the garage, listening to a few moans and growls outside the large steel door, but nothing out of the ordinary.

"What passes for ordinary these days," his deep voice rumbled to himself. Taking yet another precautionary glance around himself, he lowered the welder's mask back onto his face, and knelt down beside his cruiser, which had been modified. Reinforced steel siding, iron bars over the windows, run-flat tires; the Chief of Police had certainly been busy in his down time.

 _One Year Ago..._

"Yes, sir." Bogo said into his phone, after a few minutes of listening to the mammal on the other end, rubbing the space in between his eyes. "Yes, sir I promise you that my best officers are on it. Alright, good day, sir." The large cape buffalo set the phone down and leaned back from his desk, before there was a loud knocking at his office door.

"Come in." he said, observing the frantic-looking face of Clawhauser, the heavyset cheetah clutching a stack of papers in his paws as he entered, closing the door behind him.

"Sir, we just got another sixteen missing mammal reports from Little Rodentia in the last half an hour!" Clawhauser exclaimed.

"Alright, who do we have to spare?"

"Uh...th-that's the thing...uh...Chief..." Benjamin Clawhauser said, rubbing the back of his head.

"Yes?"

"A-All of our active duty officers are all...uh...responding to other...emergencies..."

"I see...then start contacting all off duty officers immediately."

"S-Sir?"

"Between these missing mammal reports, which I'm sure we're going to be getting even more of as the day goes by, and all the calls of random acts of violence that's sweeping each district, we need all hands on deck. I don't know what's happening, but we need those officers reporting in, ASAP!"

Clawhauser jumped at the sudden shouting before nodding and hurrying out the door to do as he was ordered. Bogo turned in his chair and stared out the window at the city.

"What is happening?"

 _Back To The Present..._

Bogo finished the last of the welding, kicking off the torch and lifting his mask to inspect his work. As he did so, the long fluorescent lights above him flickered for a moment, and then continued to illuminate the garage. The moans and growls were becoming louder, and suddenly, there was a pounding sound, coming from the far right garage door. It was soon joined with another, and then another.

"Looks like they figured out that someone was home." he said as he removed the welder's mask and set it on the nearby workbench, then started to remove the leather apron he had donned over his police uniform.

As the paws and hooves, from even more sources by the sound of them, continued to beat on the door, an even louder pounding was heard, and it started to bend a little, not much. At the bottom, at the far right corner of the door, a small sliver of light from outside shone in. Then a small shuffling form started to squeeze in under it. It was a small brown mouse, with patches of fur and chunks of flesh missing. It's clothes were torn and tattered, it's tail had been ripped off completely, leaving a stump. Both of its eyes were milky white, and completely blank of any consciousness. It continued to slowly push itself into the opening until there was a crack, and its ribs fractured in its chest, allowing it to slide under.

It paid absolutely no attention to this injury as it slowly climbed up to its hind legs, its chest now much flatter than what should have been normal. It reached out with both paws, and started shambling towards Bogo, who still had his back turned as he was packing some supplies into a small crate, which he then placed in the trunk. Slowly, with one leg dragging as it walked, the mouse continued to make its way over to him, letting out a low moan, which was drowned out by the louder moans and the even louder pounding coming from just outside. Then Bogo turned around and spotted the mouse coming towards him. He waited for it to get closer and snorted, before lifting up a hoof, and bringing it down on the zombiefied mouse with a sickening crunch, scraping the hoof against the concrete a little. Bogo looked up in time to see the metal door bend even more, and a series of other small zombie mammals start shambling through the new opening.

"Time to go." he said, hitting a button on the wall, causing the left side door to start opening, just as he climbed inside his cruiser. He then sped out through the doorway as soon as the clearance was high enough for his car, running over a zebra and two weasels. As he pulled out and looked at the small crowd of zombies, he saw what had been making the door bend. He watched the zombie elephant, whose trunk and left ear were both completely gone, slowly turn towards him and shamble with the rest of the crowd. Bogo wasted no more time as he drove down the street. As he drove, he double-checked to make sure that his trusty crowbar was in the car with him, and smiled when he spotted it in the passenger seat.

 _Ten Months Ago..._

"They're coming!" Benjamin said in a panic, looking back out the rear window of his car from the passenger seat, with Bogo in the driver's seat. Bogo kept turning the key, the engine just didn't want to turn over. They had both been running, and were equally covered in blood and gore from several different mammals. They were in the parking lot of the hospital, _Savana Central Medical Center_ , where zombies were practically pouring out of the doors.

They had been responding to some calls about fights breaking out between people in the waiting room, which was completely swamped with injuries all related to what seemed to be random attacks. Some were even reported to be attempting to eat others. The precinct's resources were stretched thinly, due to other officers responding to similar reports. So for the first time in quite a while, Clawhauser was no longer just sitting behind the desk in the front lobby.

"I can see that, Clawhauser...what is wrong with your car?!" Bogo shouted. There had already been more than a few crashes in the previous week that had put a number of police cruisers out of commission. As it was, they were stuck using Benjamin's own station wagon to respond to the call.

"I-I-I'm not sure Chief! It's been giving me a lot of trouble lately so-" the nervous cheetah tried to explain before he was cut off.

"It's no good." Bogo said, letting go of the key and opening the door to get out.

"Sir?"

"If we want to get out of here alive, we're going to need to commandeer ourselves another ride." Bogo said simply, keeping an eye on the encroaching horde of moaning and blood-covered mammals that shuffled their way towards them, as he opened the trunk and started looking around. Benjamin came around to assist him, before he found a tire iron thrust into his paws, while Bogo pulled out a crowbar.

"Just in case." Bogo said, resting a hoof onto Benjamin's shoulder, before the two started searching for a car to hotwire, as the zombies got ever closer.

 _Present Day..._

Bogo hummed to himself as he drove through the suburban area of the Meadowlands district. A number of nearly identical-looking houses passed by. Most with hastily boarded-up windows. Some showed fire damage, others were burnt down completely. Some had doors that were smashed open. Either from zombies or from looters, not a single one appeared to be intact. As Bogo continued to drive along, he noticed an antelope zombie, crouched down on a dead raccoon in the middle of the road. He slowed down a little and opened the door. He reached out with his crowbar as he drove and smashed its head in, speeding up after closing the door, and giving a snort.

 _Ten Months Ago..._

Benjamin sat there, staring off into space with a hollow look to his eyes. As they had made their way through the cars parked in the parking lot, they had managed to find one with a set of keys still in the ignition. Unfortunately, that was only after they two had had to fight off several zombies. As Bogo drove, he reflected on how, to his knowledge, in all the years that Benjamin had worked for him, he had never once seen the cheetah draw his tranq gun. And just a short while ago...they had both done what they had to in order to survive. Of course, that knowledge didn't make what they did any easier.

"S-Sir?" Benjamin said after a short while, once they had driven far enough away from the chaos that was the hospital. Bogo, still keeping a vigilant eye out, turned to look at Benjamin.

"Yes, Clawhauser?"

"I...I think..." There were tears in his eyes as he turned and showed Bogo what was clearly a bite mark on his right shoulder.

"...Benjamin..." Bogo said, reaching over and resting a comforting hoof on the cheetah's uninjured shoulder, unsure of what to say at this moment.

Like with most of those infected, within an hour of being bitten, Benjamin was stricken with a high fever. Another two hours after that, he would have started to feel severe pain in his joints, followed by vomiting and disorientation, before slipping into a coma. Some time after that, his heart would have failed, and he would have died. Within an hour after that, the virus would have reanimated his body, turning him into one of them. When the fever hit, however...Bogo did what was necessary. But of course, knowing that it was necessary didn't make it any easier.

 _Present Day..._

Bogo was brought out of his grim recollection by the sight of a series of burned-out cars, pushed together to form a crude-looking barricade. Several different mammals, all carrying some sort of weapon, walked around the burnt cars while a large semi that had been waiting in between two houses, obscured by the hedges, pulled forward to block off Bogo's escape, before the mammals in the truck exited and stood behind the cruiser, surrounding him.

"Get outta the car, hand over any weapons and supplies you have, and we'll make it quick for you." the apparent ringleader, a camel, calmly said as he strode forward. Slowly, Bogo killed the engine and pocketed the keys, before getting out and standing to his full height. Feeling confident , the group of twelve quickly approached, not noticing the arm Bogo had behind his back.

"You made a good choice, gramps." was all the camel said before Bogo's arm whipped around, holding the crowbar, and connected with the side of his head. He went down, while the rest of the gang looked on in shock, giving Bogo the opportunity he needed to charge them. They were all inexperienced fighters, apparently assuming that their trap would be enough to ensure that they would always have the upper paw. This was clearly not the case as Bogo made quick work of each one, only sustaining minor injuries. He didn't think that he had killed any of them, not that he particularly cared anymore. He searched each one, taking all of their weapons and putting them in his care. A few baseball bats, some pipes, a couple of knives, and a large sharpened machete. He then packed them all away into the trunk of the cruiser, and then pushed a car with his sheer bulk enough to allow him to drive around the barricade on the sidewalk.

 _Six Months Ago..._

"The Nocturnal District is lost entirely." Bogo said aloud as he used a marker to draw a large black X on the city map laid out on his desk. Already Little Rodentia, Sahara Square, The Rainforest District, and The Marshlands were lost. Now all that was left was Savana Central, Tundratown, The Canal District, and The Meadowlands.

"It's all falling apart..." he mumbled, listening to the radio reports of cases of the outbreak happening within the sections that they were holding. _They_ being what was left of the ZPD, mixed with deputized citizens, as they desperately tried to stomp out the zombies that would crop up, as well as try to maintain some semblance of order, despite the looters and the gangs treating this crumbling of society as their time to try and take control, not seeing that what they were doing was only going to leave nothing but a burnt-out shell of what was once the greatest city in all the world. Bogo looked up and out the window as he heard shouts, and saw a zombiefied grizzly bear lumbering down the street. It had dozens of steel rebar sticking through its upper body, some of which were dragging on the asphalt. Bogo grabbed his crowbar, partially caked in blood, and made his way downstairs, not trusting the elevator due to the infrequent power outages. He met a wolf officer who was also on the way down.

"I'm taking this one, Fangmeyer. You get what rest you can." Bogo said, Fangmeyer nodding and returning to one of the roll away cots that they had all been sharing in the halls. Bogo continued down and out the front lobby doors.

 _Present Day..._

After remembering how Fangmeyer was literally ripped apart a few days later by a horde that he had not noticed surrounding him as he had desperately panicked in trying to run, Bogo grimly looked upon the large and hastily constructed walls of the last holdout that the survivors, not belonging to any gangs and what was left of the ZPD called home. Bogo was waved through the front gates by Officer Wilde, who was wearing his uniform and sunglasses.

He pulled in to the general parking area of what was the ZPD headquarters, and was now housing for the survivors. He then popped the trunk and started distributing the weapons he had collected, in addition to the canned food and medicine he was able to scrounge from his time outside the walls. Bogo had taken to the job of scavenging better than he had in leading others in this crisis. He could only take so much of the burden, watch so many mammals, his own officers included, die right before him.

Thankfully, another natural born leader had made herself known, and had been able to rally those around her. She had proven to have a sharp mind, and was excellent at strategy. Already the area that they occupied and cleared had actually tripled in size, compared to what it once was not too long ago. And the number of survivors that they had found and rescued had doubled.

There were still tragedies, still deaths, and still clashes with other groups that were not interested in cooperation. But for the first time in a year, Bogo smiled, and felt the small tickle of hope in his heart, despite how much his heart had hardened. Then he saw her, giving orders, and still, amazingly, showing her usual pep and radiating her general aura of positivity, even if it did seem a little forced at times. Bogo watched Officer Hopps for a few minutes, before shrugging and climbing back into his cruiser and firing up the engine. He drove back out through the gates, his deliveries always short affairs, and headed back out into the city.

 **I certainly hope that you enjoyed my little story, and will keep an eye out for my other stories for this month! As well as check out** _ **AeroQC**_ **'s profile for more information on a larger Halloween project that this is just a creepy piece of.**


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